


The Time Passes

by TrashAYfanfiction



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Boyfriends, Canon Compliant, Empathy, Feels, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, Spoilers, Youthful Artists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashAYfanfiction/pseuds/TrashAYfanfiction
Summary: Post-end, pre-GOLA short recollection of Eiji's boyfriends after....what they don't speak about. Sing takes this as a sign he's moving on, but that's not how Eiji sees it. Is this healing or prolonging the problem. Grief is strange like that.





	The Time Passes

**Author's Note:**

> I have awakened from my slumber. I started writing this one before my hiatus, and finished it in an attempt to kick writer’s block. I have a handfull more BF stories I'm working on, but idk.

 

                To say Eiji hadn’t moved on wasn’t entirely wrong. He dated a few men after coming back to America. All of them cute rugged blondes, almost all artist fascinated with their own version of poetic tragedy.

They were all shallow replacements for Ash.

Sing didn’t know if Eiji was doing this on purpose, but he was happy the man was finally taking interest in people again.

First there was a jobless musician. He was the first dated after Ash died. Sing was relieved. He didn’t want to phrase it as ‘moved on’, but he was glad Eiji had regained an interest in life and wasn’t chasing shadows for a moment.

They met in a coffee shop where the man was performing for tips. His voice wasn’t wonderful, but the songs had feeling. His friend was the barista and had convinced management to allow him to play.

                Eiji had been taking photos of the performance. This was not a press event. Eiji had no intention of coming here to at shoot the café, it was merely a stopping point on his way to a shoot something else. He was constantly taking photos now. Somethings needed to be real. Some things needed to last. Unofficial, but inspiring; he took the images of the performer for himself.

                                At the end of the set, Eiji asked him about the songs he wrote. The man said they were for his cousin who died in a car crash. They would always play music together when they were kids. The cousin was the one who had taught him to play guitar.

The musician was about Eiji’s age, his pale locks only slightly darker and shorter than Ash’s.

                His eyes were brown. His fingers were long and thin. He saw the beauty in life even when everything was garbage. They exchanged numbers and went on a few dates.

                The musician said music kept him from killing himself after the accident. He said it was a way to still remember…. Eiji brushed a finger over his camera and said he understood. He didn’t go into detail about Ash.

They bonded over their lost loved ones, how their phenomenal life forces had inspired them, never to be replaced. Both of their heroes had been far from what most people would call ‘role models’; bad boys who went their own way and had their own string of woes. They licked each other’s wounds for a night or two, but went their separate ways.

The relationship lasted about a month, which was more than Sing was expecting, honestly. Sing wasn’t expecting a relationship at all. Surprised that the friendly chatting from the impromptu meeting had turned into something more. He was thankful Eiji was taking interest in people, Eiji needed other friends who weren’t from…. _that_ time.

Eiji still kept tabs on the musician sometimes. He said the man was ‘going places’ and that ‘things were well’. Sing asked what record label the man had signed onto. Eiji said no record label yet, but he had many small gigs.

Tragedy could be inspiration…..

……………………………..  

 

The next boyfriend was painter he met at the gallery. A washed-up painter…or wannabe painter…or something. Sing had never seen him paint or create anything whatsoever, but Eiji said he was just shy.

A shrimp of a man who’s left ear was pierced from top to bottom. Ash’s build if only the man had been taller, but this man’s blonde locks were fake, dark roots were easily visible and the color of blonde was more shocking than beautiful.

They talked for a few weeks, and he motivated Eiji to be out of the house. Sing thought that was good, at first.

But he was jealous. He accused Eiji of cheating on him when he learned how often Sing was around. He only wanted Eiji to spend time with him. He was also an alcoholic, a trait Eiji said ‘wasn’t his fault’ and ‘he nonviolent, so what does it matter?’. Eiji said the man was ‘sad and lonely, his parents _this_ , his last boyfriend _that_ ”, but it only got worse. There was no healing to be had here, for either of them, but Eiji still clung to the painter. It ended with Sing throwing the man out of Eiji’s apartment.

Eiji yelled at him for ‘being mean to his boyfriend’, he yelled that the man was ‘just misunderstood’, and “You don’t know why! He has bad luck! He can’t help it!”

Sing grit his teeth, feeling the guilt coil in his gut. “He’s responsible for himself, and so are you. You don’t need to fix him, he doesn’t want help, he wants pity. Ash would be ashamed you’re making excuses for this guy.”

He almost regretted what he said when Eiji winced. That empathy would be his downfall.

“He says he wants help! What’s he going to do without me!?”

                “He wants attention, you need to leave. He’s not going to get better,”

“He doesn’t want to be dysfunctional,”

“Most don’t. Most either don’t think they’re bad, or don’t want to be. You’re very kind, but don’t be the savior to everyone,”

“I don’t think I’m a savior,” Eiji sniffed. Shedding far too many tears, for Sing to want to acknowlege.

“I know,” Sing carefully put a hand on his shoulder. _You undervalue yourself._ But saying it wouldn’t help. Eiji needed to figure that out on his own.

He wondered if Eiji would have found Ash at all if it hadn’t been for that empathy.

…………………………………………………

 

After that, Eiji found a dirty puppy in a pile of garbage. Sing let him be this savior. Eiji did need someone to take care of and be with.

Sing felt strange giving advice to someone five years his senior, but loss did strange things to a person. Him and Eiji both.  

……………………………………………………….

The last boyfriend was a young skater boy who wasn’t necessarily an artist, but who’s rebellious spirit was something Eiji admired. ‘Freedom’, he said, ‘A life with no regrets”. The man was popular, joking, easygoing, fun. He was what Eiji needed on the surface. He was what Ash was like when Ash was around Eiji.

The only problem was neither of them were in high school anymore, but the skater was still living that life. He would be spending evenings at the skatepark, bouncing around from couches and part time jobs….indefinitely. He was still adrift, aimless, going with the wind and not going anywhere in particular, but not staying still. Eiji took so many pictures of this new muse.

When Sing was 14, he looked up to guys like that; tied down by nothing. As an adult he thought differently; Unemployed, penniless, no family, living out of a backpack. Not the kind of guy who would be an anchor for anyone. Sing was worried that meant Eiji was holding onto the past, regretting what he’d never done; the youth that had now left him. After two months of dating Sing told Eiji his concern.

Sing wondered how Ash would have matured. Would he have stayed king of the streets? Would he have died there, even with Eiji? Surely the brilliant young man was well suited to be the crime lord Golzine had groomed him for. Could he have stayed out of trouble? Or was it ingrained into him as the life he’d always known… Would he go out and seek a youth he’d never had with Eiji?

Sing assumed the answer was ‘no’. Ash had relished the short moments with Eiji; talking about Japan and being a normal boy, but Sing doubted he ever fully believed in ‘getting out’. He was in too deep. Even if he ‘came back’,  there would be scars of war that wouldn’t heal. It was like that Salinger story, ‘Perfect Day for Banana Fish’, wasn’t it? He’d read the short story some years after the incident, when he was still trying to make sense of the horror. Sometimes you can’t comeback, or won’t let yourself come back. Even though it’s over, you die with your mind still in it….

A few of the gang ‘got out’. Alex managed a dollar store where Kong also had a job. They were running a small drug hustle in the back of it, but overall it was clean. Kong’s girlfriend had two kids who loved the big man. Bones just disappeared. …a couple of the boys had died. Some got out, some didn’t.

The horror had motivated Sing; seeing violence take Shorter, Lao, and Ash. Something needed to change. It had scarred him. He saw things he couldn’t unsee.

 

Nadia cried to him and begged, “Not you too, You’re too young. Please Sing!”

He wondered if reliving the past through these men was how Eiji refused to ‘get out’.

The boyfriends were an escape, a semblance of change, but not totally.

Wild was fun.

Men. They were men, trying to hang on to their youth as boys. Almost all of them. They were things Ash could have been.

Eiji didn’t want to change.

 

                Sing wondered Ash had had time to be just a boy. He heard the whole of Ash’s story one day when he and Max met at one of Eiji’s exhibitions. During the story he remembered his own wayward youth, parents negligent, but not abusive. Working many jobs, but still poor. He was free to run the streets of Chinatown. At first causing harmless trouble, that steadily progressed to less harmless.

                He didn’t know what Eiji’s boyhood consisted of. The Japanese man never talked about it.

He questioned what Eiji’s family would have thought of brining a Caucasian man home to stay. An American. A male partner. How would have their life carried out in Japan?

                He knew Eiji and his family rarely talked. He didn’t know if they knew about Eiji’s boyfriends, or if they knew the extent he had cared about Ash.

                Did not telling make Eiji a ‘bad kid’?

 

Eiji wouldn’t leave New York.

He probably _couldn’t_ leave New York.

He was still chasing Ash’s memory around the familiar corners. All the shadows and memories, everything here reminded him of Ash.

He said he loved it all, the light and the darkness. He saw Ash in the people.

Eiji never thought about the ‘bad kids’ before meeting Ash. ‘Bad kids’ wasn’t ever the full story, was it?

 

                The skater left and moved to California. He invited Eiji to go too.

Eiji stayed in New York.

 

 

None of the relationships lasted long. It was just a few here and there.

Everything always circled back to Ash. Even with Ash’s pictures hidden away, he was present here.

 

 

Any of these men could have been Ash.

Sing wished he could help, “It’s okay to mourn, it’s okay to move on,”

“Yeah, I know,” Eiji barely acknowledged him.

“I want to see you happy again,” Sing hoped the concern was apparent in his voice.

“Me too, I’m just not ready yet,” A forced smile, begging him not to worry.

 

They still didn’t talk about Ash.

There were no more boyfriends after that.

                ……………..

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of feel like this one is ‘empty’. I feel like I could have gotten my point across better. Speaking of living in the past, I’m still writing Banana Fish. I’ve been writing BF fics for forever and I will likely continue to write them on and off when the inspiration hits me. It's unlikely i will update/publish as frequently as I did when the anime was coming out, unless new BF inspiration strikes me with the BF short stories being animated, the novels being published in English, or an English Dub happening; none of which look to be scheduled for the future at all. I will still write, but I am slow.  
> As always, you can find me at  
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashayfanfiction  
> https://twitter.com/FishboneLynx


End file.
